My Generation (50th Anniversary) 3XLP

Album Details

In the half century since its release The Who's debut album My Generation has lost none of it's raw visceral power and still stands as the ultimate musical declaration of teenage rebellion. The title track alone has been covered innumerable times by the likes of Oasis, Green Day, Patti Smith, Billy Joel, Alice Cooper and Iron Maiden amongst many more. Back in 1965 the band were considered to be so dangerous that the tailors tasked with turning a Union Jack into a pop art mod jacket for the cover feared that they would be jailed for desecration of the nation's flag. The Who's surly demeanor that day in 1965 at London's Surrey Docks and the brazen appropriation of the symbol of state is the best advert possible for My Generation. It's an album that sounds like it looks: terse, confrontational and full of youthful angst and energy.

Brunswick Records first issued My Generation in the UK in December 1965, and later in the US, under the title The Who Sings My Generation, in April 1966. It was produced by Shel Talmy who shot to fame with his work with The Kinks, a group that the teenage Pete Townshend admired greatly. During a break in touring in 2015 Townshend discovered tapes in his audio archive featuring previously unheard demos for the album which also included three totally unreleased songs that the other members of The Who hadn't ever even heard, "The Girls I Could Have Had," "As Children We Grew" and "My Own Love." This limited edition 50th Anniversary 3LP-set features the original mono album, 12 mono bonus tracks and the aforementioned unheard songs and Townshend's unreleased demos.